Enobytes Wine Blog

I’ve entered Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw Challenge. The rules are simple. Answer the question, “What does it mean to cook food well?”

If you enjoy my ramblings below, share the love and vote for my entry.  I’ll forever be indebted!

~ Macdaddy Marc

Who Cares

Who cares? Not just about food, or wine, or why one should always cook well, but who really f**k’n cares? What do you care about and how much do you care? If it happens to be about food that is fantastic, but we must care and care a lot.

This caring thing is much bigger than we may have ever contemplated and it’s connected to the fabric that connects all of us as human beings. The oneness of being that is often only associated with eastern religions and clean LSD experiences shows it’s presence every time you step up to the stove. In fact, it taunts you.

For me, it’s the spirit that manifests itself in all your senses that makes you grab a sauté pan with vigor to make every dish better even though you’ve made it ten thousand times before.  Viola! Now you know when you are at the corner of  Read the rest of this entry »

Enophiles! Listen up.  Today, June 12, 2010, Enobytes is the Featured Wine Blog on Foodista.com, “The Cooking Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit.” Their mission is to build the world’s largest online resource for all things culinary, so If you haven’t checked out the site, follow the link and surf the site! Thanks for the kudos Foodista!

Marc and I finally made it back home after an awesome pilgrimage through Spain’s vast wine regions. Our travels took us through Madrid, Pesquera de Duero (Valladolid, Ribera del Deuro), Peñafiel, Bilbao, Haro & Logrono (Rioja), Barcelona, Castelldefels, El Molar (Priorat), and Aragon, casting a flow of memories worth sharing with you in the coming weeks and months. For now, take 10 minutes out of your day, sit back and watch the slide show to experience everything España has to offer!

If you are looking for ways to help Haiti victims, so many great wineries, restaurants and bloggers are pulling together to help the Haiti victims devastated by the 2010 earthquake tragedy which sparked widespread panic as it caused destruction throughout Port-au-Prince.

Here are just some of the great fundraisers happening around the world. Please consider participating or donating to one of these great charitable organizations.

Brother, can you spare a bottle? is teaming up with Palate Press: The online wine magazine to encourage the wine-loving world to contribute to a cause outside our own. Donate something special from your cellar for auction. Proceeds will help the Haiti victims devastated by the 2010 earthquake tragedy.

WLDG Haitian Relief Fundraiser: – Raffle of Bordeaux, an online forum raffle & fundraiser.

Wine 4 Haiti SF Charity Fundraiser – San Francisco, CA. January 18th. A public charity wine tasting to raise money for four foundations to directly help the Haiti earthquake relief effort: Sirona Cares Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, Partners In Health and the American Red Cross.

Eat for Haiti – San Francisco foodies and chefs unite to help earthquake victims. Various events run from January 14 through the 23rd.

Portland relief funds for Haiti – A list of Portland, OR restaurants contributing a portion of their sales to Haiti disaster relief.

Help for Haiti: A growing list of Los Angeles restaurants and food trucks contributing to the Haiti disaster relief.

Food Lovers Fundraiser for Haiti – London, UK, February 8, 2010. A fundraising dinner with all proceeds being donated to the ‘Disasters Emergency Committee’. Confirmed chefs for this charitable event include Vickram Purewal from Le Bouchon Breton and Herbert Berger.

How To Help Haiti In Chicago – A list of Chicago restaurants and bars contributing to the Haiti disaster relief.

Foodie Fund-Raising Efforts for Haiti – A list of fundraising efforts happening in the Bay area.

Do you know of other food and wine fundraisers going on in your community and around the world? Help us build a list of events supporting Haiti so that others know about them. Post a comment and get the word out. Read the rest of this entry »

As seasoned home cooks await for magazines like Gourmet and Bon Appetite to hit the newstands, professionals and die-hard enthusiasts’ wait (like addicts) for the next Saveur to hit their desk (and for obvious reasons). Since 1994, the magazine continuously pushes the envelope to pack every issue with the passion and expression of cutting-edge innovations, culinary styles and techniques, which measure to a quality others languish to obtain — and when a publication like Saveur Magazine names you as a “Best of the Web”, well, that’s some news worth celebrating.

In ’07 and ’08, Saveur won the James Beard Foundation for feature writing, which goes to show that they’ve managed to stay on top of their game by providing good quality content for fifteen years. As longtime supporters and readers, this magazine continues to enlighten and shape our lives as it does for culinarians and enophiles across the globe.

It was back in 1986 where Marc and I visited Mark Miller’s Coyote Café, where the journey began. The style of hospitality at Coyote Café was Read the rest of this entry »

Photo credit: Modern Language Center

I’m a wine geek at heart so when I heard about an opportunity to receive a scholarship to attend a 3-day Spanish Wine education course sponsored by the Wine Academy of Spain and Catavino,  I jumped at the opportunity to find out more about the program.

I’m well aware of some of the initiatives this well-respected academy has headed up in the past, including the World Conference on Climate Change lead by Pancho Campo. If you have an interest in the impacts of climate change and how to adapt to a new climate, check out some of the audio files I uploaded a couple of years ago.

As for their latest venture, Catavino is responsible for the organization and development of awarding one scholarship to a blogger in each of the twelve cities the Academy plans to visit. Integrating the social media aspect into the business model of the Wine Academy is a smart move …and lucky for me, they’ll be hosting one of their 3-day certification programs right here in Portland! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m trying to wrap my head around the bittersweet debate of pairing wine with chocolate. I certainly have my own thoughts on the subject (which I’ll get into shortly) but what’s interesting is that for years, no one openly, at least in my recollection, debated that wine didn’t go with chocolate. Heck, it matches as well as peanut butter and chocolate, right?

Well, according to some, not exactly. I’ve come across a few posts that debunk the myth (here and here) and I’ve talked about this subject with some of my colleagues, and I’ve been surprised by some of their responses – the two don’t work so well together. When I asked this same question to my twitter wine aficionados’, answers varied greatly, and I have to admit I strongly agree with one of the comments coming from Lenndevours that even most of the “great” pairings are barely decent. Read the rest of this entry »

We have a new concept in dining available here in the Portland area – the Portland Dining Club. It’s a concept about saving but it encompasses a theory that is a lot broader than that.

Attracting dining dollars is a tough business to be in these days. Today on Wine Bytes, my wine blog on OregonLive, I talk about the players involved in this venture and how they have succeeded where others have failed. Check out the post here.

It’s the year of the Ox, which represents a sign of prosperity through fortitude, perseverance and hard work. Its timing is appropriate as we struggle through rough economic times and realize the challenges that lay before us, but it’s also a time to

bask in our opportunities by defiantly proceeding in a careful yet progressive pace without worrying about our obstacles. In celebration of the holiday, I wanted to find a unique dinner that would signify strength and prosperity to memorialize the occasion. Creating a meal with oxtails immediately came to mind. Besides the obvious (year of the ox – oxtails!), beef tails have an interesting and deeply rooted history touching so many cultures that I found this main ingredient to be a perfect match to mark the occasion. There are many oxtail recipes and the first that came to mind was Oxtail soup. I wasn’t familiar with a Chinese version of the dish, but I recall a memorable meal I had at Frontera Grill & Topolobambo in Chicago.

Photo: timtayag.com

Back in the 90′s Rick Bayless used to prepare Tita’s menu from Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate every Valentines Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Cinco de Mayo is upon us and many question wine pairings with Mexican dishes. Dr. Vino posted this same conundrum on his blog, approriately titled, "Burritos – impossible food-wine pairing!?", for which he asks his readers to recommend what they would pair with a burrito. It’s interesting to see posters recommend everything from sparkling wine to Zinfandel. One poster went as far as to say everyone was wrong with their suggestions, since "Mexican food + mexican wine = the only match".

When it comes to Mexican food, there really isn’t much difference between burritos and grilling up some meat and accompanying it with some vegetables, herbs and a starch. So why do we have such a hard time selecting a wine that compliments Mexican dishes? Some may think it’s an impossible task, but Read the rest of this entry »